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Buildkite vs GitLab comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Buildkite
Ranking in Build Automation
16th
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
7.5
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
GitLab
Ranking in Build Automation
3rd
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
91
Ranking in other categories
Application Security Tools (7th), Release Automation (2nd), Static Application Security Testing (SAST) (4th), Rapid Application Development Software (12th), Software Composition Analysis (SCA) (4th), Enterprise Agile Planning Tools (2nd), Fuzz Testing Tools (2nd), DevSecOps (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2026, in the Build Automation category, the mindshare of Buildkite is 3.3%, up from 1.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of GitLab is 6.3%, down from 14.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Build Automation Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
GitLab6.3%
Buildkite3.3%
Other90.4%
Build Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Hamza AlZa'Atreh - PeerSpot reviewer
Sr. DevOps Engineer at Bank aletihad
Have great plugins, pipeline options and offer webhooks for integration
BuildKite should follow some providers like GitHub Actions. They can offer a shared agent or cloud agent. If you have some builds that don't require a private environment or support data, you can use their shared data. For example, with Buildkite, I can use self-hosted agents running on my infrastructure and public shared agents. I will pay for the production minutes used as the production agent. For instance, if my job runs for ten minutes, I will be charged for ten minutes of usage.
BasilJiji - PeerSpot reviewer
System engineer at a retailer with 10,001+ employees
Role-based workflows have transformed daily deployments and improve team collaboration
GitLab has role-based access control, so when a team member needs to make a code change, they cannot directly apply it to the environment but must put in a merge request. Once a senior reviews the code and approves it, then it is implemented across the environment, making it safer and allowing everyone to experience the process. The best features GitLab offers are version control and automation, which are the major things that stand out to me. When it comes to access, the login is very smooth, with just one login integrated with our Okta, allowing everyone to log in easily. Deployments become much easier, and that is how GitLab helps. The automation features make my work easier because we use a tool called AWX, which is connected to GitLab. Whenever we run a job on AWX, it directly checks the code and uses it. Since the code is not preserved locally but kept in the cloud, it is safe and nobody can tamper with it. When it comes to safety, that is a major thing. Automation features allow the code to be accessed from any tools we use, so the jobs we run are helping tremendously and doing their work perfectly. For pipeline tasks, we have created a significant amount of pipelines, which are all hosted in GitLab. Running the pipelines has become much easier, and they are doing a perfect job, helping tremendously in our day-to-day activities. GitLab has positively impacted my organization because previously we stored code locally on servers, leading to many risks. Since GitLab came into our environment, our integration and deployments became much easier, helping our work become much smoother. Improvements from GitLab have led to better team collaboration because when several people are working, they can all edit the code and submit it as a merge request, and once approved, it reflects directly to the main branch. Many can work at the same time. When it comes to deployments, deploying has become much faster since we started using GitLab, and even if errors occur, we can spot them easily and troubleshoot, which has helped tremendously.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"Buildkite's UI is particularly intuitive, making it simple to add steps to your pipeline. It also provides detailed logging."
"The tool's flexibility with pipelines gave us a lot of advantages, especially when managing a huge amount of microservices."
"They have great plugins, scalability, UI, and pipeline options. They also offer webhooks that allow integration with custom setups to send events dynamically."
"The product's initial setup phase was easy."
"Buildkite makes it easier to conduct deployment. When I merge a PR in Buildkite, it automatically starts the deployment process. It used to be challenging to shift code from the development branch to the testing branch because I had to follow up with multiple developers. Previously, I was dependent on the DevOps team and developers to handle deployments, but now it allows me to deploy the solutions myself.This has made it much easier for me to handle both non-production and production environments."
"With two years of experience on Buildkite, I would recommend it to others due to its manageable pipeline and the support team available for big issues."
"What I like best about Buildkite is its workflow management. You define YAML files to specify what needs to be done. The jobs can run based on a schedule, like a cron job, where you set it to run every night or every week. Additionally, you can set up triggers, such as new pushes to a repository."
"It is a stable solution."
"The code merging capability is something that we use very frequently."
"I was satisfied with the support."
"It is very flexible and easy because you can store data on cloud."
"It is very useful for reviews. We are using branch merging operations and full reset operations. It is also very useful for merging our code and tracking another branch. The graph diagrams of Git are very useful. Its interface is straightforward and not too complex for us."
"GitLab is being used as a repository for our codebase and it is a one stop DevOps tool we use in our team."
"The solution is stable."
"The solution has an established roadmap that lays out its plans for upgrades over the next two to three years."
"The merging feature makes it easy later on for the deployment."
 

Cons

"The product must provide better integration with other tools."
"There is a need for rework occasionally, and issues like syntax errors can occur multiple times, especially when manual changes are made in AWS or Amazon Connect that are not captured in the code."
"Buildkite has issues while creating or extending branches as only the first five builds in the user-interface can be accessed and post that one has to access the next builds by remembering branch names without pagination which can be inconvenient."
"BuildKite should follow some providers like GitHub Actions. They can offer a shared agent or cloud agent."
"The way Buildkite represents workflows can be challenging. It uses Directed Acyclic Graphs, and there's a trade-off between abstraction and understanding what goes wrong when something fails. When a layer of jobs breaks down, it can be difficult to identify the issue at first glance. Additionally, logging can be cumbersome. I prefer GitHub Workflows."
"The solution should offer more options for installing an agent and give users the option of having a separate self-hosted or provisioned agent."
"I would like to see some improvements in the hooks implementation."
"Compared to market leaders like Azure DevOps and Jenkins, Buildkite's community is smaller, but they do have some documentation."
"As a partner, sometimes it's difficult to get support. They have a really complicated procedure for their support."
"The technology could be made simpler to use, it should not be overly complex."
"While GitLab is a great tool for developers, it lacks project planner features. Roadmaps and Gantt charts in GitLab are not as advanced as in Jira, and changing start and end dates is more laborious in GitLab."
"From the DevOps perspective, the way we deploy applications is too complicated. It needs to be simplified."
"GitLab needs to improve the CI/CD functionality because it is not compatible with Jenkins and other tools, as it is not that efficient."
"The only thing our company is really waiting on in terms of features is the development of metrics."
"Some of the scripts that we encountered in GitLab were not fully functional and threw up errors."
"The licensing model could be improved to be more accommodating in terms of user numbers and costs."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The self-hosted option is pretty cheap."
"For a business plan, it was 19 USD per month per user."
"The solution's per-user pricing model suits huge enterprises but is expensive for small to medium businesses."
"We used the solution’s free version."
"I find Buildkite cost-effective as it has definitely increased my productivity, especially on the deployment side. It saved a lot of my time and improved data management because I can handle different environments myself now."
"Buildkite is known to be cheaper than GitHub Workflows, which is considered a standard in the industry. It can be cost-effective, especially for organizations that heavily utilize Docker and containerization, because every code change triggers a new build. Its integration with AWS, particularly with ECR, and its caching capabilities with layers are powerful features."
"I don't think the tool is expensive."
"The solution is free."
"In terms of the pricing for GitLab, on a scale of one to five, with one being expensive and five being cheap, I'm rating pricing for the solution a four. It could still be cheaper because right now, my company has a small team, and sometimes it's difficult to use a paid product for a small team. You'd hope the team will grow and scale, but currently, you're paying a high license fee for a small team. I'm referring to the GitLab license that has premium features and will give you all features. This can be a problem for management to approve the high price of the license for a team this small."
"We are using the free version of GitLab."
"GitLab is an open-source solution."
"Regarding pricing, I would rate GitLab as moderately priced, maybe around a seven or eight out of ten. It could be more flexible for clients but generally offers good value."
"GitLab is comparatively expensive, but it provides value because it's feature-rich."
"I'm not aware of the licensing costs because those were covered by the customer."
"The solution's standard license is paid annually. They have changed the pricing model and it used to be better. There is a free version available."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Outsourcing Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
12%
Healthcare Company
7%
Financial Services Firm
14%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Government
9%
Computer Software Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business7
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise6
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business38
Midsize Enterprise10
Large Enterprise49
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with Buildkite?
One area that needs improvement in Buildkite is the requirement for rework of the code. There can be syntax errors when running the Buildkite pipeline, especially if someone has made manual changes...
What is your primary use case for Buildkite?
I use Buildkite for deployment tasks related to building AMI images and deploying routing profile queues into Amazon Connect. This involves using Buildkite in conjunction with GitHub. We create fil...
What advice do you have for others considering Buildkite?
With two years of experience on Buildkite, I would recommend it to others due to its manageable pipeline and the support team available for big issues. I am satisfied with it, rating its stability ...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for GitLab?
The setup cost for GitLab is minimal since the team has its own minimal resource balancing. The costing falls into an intermediate stage and is impactful across all results within the team. It allo...
What needs improvement with GitLab?
There are many improvements that GitLab can implement, such as addressing the issue of caching. Currently, when I have multiple tasks to merge or attempt multiple merges, the CI/CD and overall GitL...
What is your primary use case for GitLab?
My main use case for GitLab is as a version control system that we are using. Currently, I am working on an end-to-end AI pipeline, and I have deployed my whole code using GitLab so that all things...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

No data available
Fuzzit
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Information Not Available
1. NASA  2. IBM  3. Sony  4. Alibaba  5. CERN  6. Siemens  7. Volkswagen  8. ING  9. Ticketmaster  10. SpaceX  11. Adobe  12. Intuit  13. Autodesk  14. Rakuten  15. Unity Technologies  16. Pandora  17. Electronic Arts  18. Nordstrom  19. Verizon  20. Comcast  21. Philips  22. Deutsche Telekom  23. Orange  24. Fujitsu  25. Ericsson  26. Nokia  27. General Electric  28. Cisco  29. Accenture  30. Deloitte  31. PwC  32. KPMG
Find out what your peers are saying about Buildkite vs. GitLab and other solutions. Updated: August 2026.
908,834 professionals have used our research since 2012.